Actor Jaafar Jackson spent two years preparing to play his uncle, pop singer Michael Jackson, in MICHAEL, and says even the scenes audiences never saw helped him grow.
“But for me, it was the most rewarding experience because even the things that weren’t used, the experience I got from them, made me a better actor,” Jackson reflected in a recent Variety interview.
It’s a revealing answer from someone whose first professional acting role came with a family history attached. Jackson wasn’t just learning to portray a famous performer; he was stepping into the life of the uncle he remembered asking for candy and playing hide-and-seek with as a child.
Lionsgate announced his casting in January 2023, with director Antoine Fuqua and producer Graham King guiding the project. But a familiar last name didn’t mean Jackson could skip the homework.
He told Variety he assembled a personal library of his uncle’s songs, demos, writings, performances and rehearsals, studying it daily. Acting coach Angela Gibbs helped him find classes and other coaches, while he explored different acting techniques to discover what worked for him.
“The voice came first. The movement was harder,” the actor admitted. Jackson said he sent King an unexpected voice note speaking as Michael, prompting the producer to arrange a coach.
The dancing brought its own stubborn problems. Repeating the toe-standing move hurt, Jackson recalled, while the larger challenge was making carefully rehearsed choreography look free and spontaneous rather than like a checklist of steps.
That preparation also meant doing work that didn’t survive the edit. Variety reported in April that the original third act addressed child sexual abuse allegations against Michael, but producers changed the ending after discovering a settlement clause that barred depicting or mentioning accuser Jordan Chandler.
Those were allegations, not findings established by the movie’s production changes. Michael’s attorneys maintained his innocence when announcing the civil settlement in 1994; a civil settlement is not a criminal verdict.
Asked about losing material he had already performed, Jaafar described it as part of learning the craft. His answer concerned what the experience taught him as an actor, not a resolution of the allegations or an explanation of what a future installment would cover.
For viewers, that distinction matters: a biographical drama presents a selected portion of a life, not a complete historical record. Appreciating the work behind a performance doesn’t require treating the movie’s boundaries as the boundaries of the story.
And despite the sequel talk, Jackson wasn’t offering a start date. He said he was ready to return but had not received concrete scheduling information.
“I haven’t been told a date or anything solid yet. As far as my schedule, it’s open,” he said when asked where another MICHAEL installment stood.
For now, Jackson’s account puts the emphasis on what he could control: studying, rehearsing and arriving ready. Knowing the family gave him memories to draw on; learning to act meant turning those memories into a performance, even when some of that work stayed off screen.
Read Next: Lionsgate Already Hard at Work on MICHAEL 2
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